Landwalker

The Cygnaran Space Administration spent the day ticking off a bunch of minor contracts in order to put a little more cash in the bank and science in the R&D lab. A couple of Kerbin-centric tourist jaunts, a LKO rescue mission, some launchpad tests of parts, all mundane stuff (although I was pleased with the LKO rescue because it was the first time I had rendezvoused with a stranded kerbal without accidentally ramming their capsule when trying to close in on them). Built a primitive jet-engine-powered science cart in order to putter around KSC and collect enough research to unlock Field Science, then used those parts to build a Science Kart II as a rover (instead of a jet-powered tricycle) and grab more KSC data to unlock multi-kerbal command pods. Command Modules was the last tech I wanted before turning back to the Mun, so that is on the docket for this evening. The plan: Send Bob up alone in a two-person command module, rendezvous with and rescue a kerbal stranded in Munar orbit, land that sucker on the Mun, come home, stay intact. This will be my first time since 0.22 landing a multi-kerbal craft on the Mun, so hopefully I don't ball it all up.

I've had success so far setting the Mk16 and Mk2-R parachutes to automatically release at 0.5 atmospheres and to fully-deploy at 1,000 meters. I suspect you can get away with 500 meters for full-deployment, but I'd be nervous about going much lower than 0.5 (maybe 0.45) for the initial release. Just make sure you aim for a low-altitude landing area. =P I'm not sure about droguesâ€â€haven't unlocked them yet in my 1.0.4 career. However, you can sort of back into itâ€â€run a test flight, and on the way down, right-click on a drogue parachute. Hit the Escape key when the info box tells you it's safe to deploy, then check your speed (for curiosity's sake) and altitude above sea level. Then consult this table and figure out what atmospheric pressure level roughly corresponds to that altitude, and use that for the initial release. No idea what an appropriate "full deployment" altitude-above-surface is for drogues, as I've honestly never used them beforeâ€â€didn't have to in 1.0.2, at least not for the fairly primitive missions I was running, so I'm not familiar with their operation.

The Cygnaran Space Administration got a tad overexcited about its contracts to flyby, orbit, collect science from space around, perform visual surveys over, and return from the Mun, and decided to not only do all of them at once but to do it with a polar orbit in order to grab low-space EVA reports for all of the munar biomes. I apparently grossly overengineered the Raelthorne I craft, because the launch stage not only got Bob Kerman out of Kerbin's atmosphere, it also circularized in LKO, transferred to the Mun, and nearly circularized in munar orbit, to boot, before finally running out of fuel. That Skipper engine is a workhorse. Once there, the "transfer and munar maneuvers" stage finished circularizing and pulling the craft into a polar munar orbit of around 30 km, upon which Bob commenced with EVA reports and general science shenanigans. After returning to Kerbin's atmosphere, the Raelthorne I had enough fuel left for a very significant deceleration burn, making atmospheric reentry a much more palatable affair. A few minutes later, Bob was safe in the pristine waters of Kerbin, and the CSA had over 700 new sciences to play with (and a great deal more money, the better to upgrade the R&D facility with). The Raelthorne I munar mission, ready for launch. Sadly, I am horribly negligent when it comes to screenshots during missions. Must get better about that in the futureâ€â€I had to go back and "relaunch" the Raelthorne I just to get that shot. Next order of business for the Cygnaran Space Administration is to land something (maybe a probe, maybe Bob Kerman) on the surface of the Mun! And maybe perform a few rescue missions to flesh out the CSA's kerbonaut roster.

The Cygnaran Space Administration got Bob into a not-quite-close-enough polar Kerbin orbit in order to mine EVA reports over the various biomes in near-space. Also completed a few minor contracts, culminating in a keosynchronous satellite. The CSA is confident that it now possesses the technology to begin exploration of the Mun, and plans are being laid for a manned Munar flyby in the near future.

The reason yours looks different has to do with your KSP buildings. What you're referring to ("green lines" and "when to engage engines") has to do with setting up maneuver nodes, and you can't do those until (if memory serves) both your Mission Control and Tracking Facility buildings are upgraded to Level 2. Until then, no maneuvers for youâ€â€have to fly it by ear/eye/taste/whatever! I would highly (highly highly highly highly) recommend . This is what I watched when I first came back to KSP for the first time since 0.22 a couple of weeks ago, and it helps immensely. Despite being brilliant at it, Scott does a great job of making it clear what he's doing and why he's doing it so you can extrapolate to other situations.

This may not impact your (or any else's) experiences, but I just want to clarify something in case there was misunderstanding of terms: When I say "Deploy", what I really mean is "release the parachute from its container into its non-expanded state as a makeshift drogue", which might be considered "semi-deployed". I don't mean "Completely unfurl the parachute to maximum capacity" or "fully deployed." I realize from time to time that different people have different ideas about what "deploying a parachute" means, and that that might cause some confusion. So what I'm really doingâ€â€or rather, what I had been doing in 1.0.2â€â€was to set parachutes to automatically "semi-deploy" at about 0.35 atmospheres, which works out to somewhere in the neighborhood of 6.5 km above sea level and, at least for the types of reentries I was doing at the time, about 230-260 meters/second, and then to "fully deploy" only at either 1,000 meters or 500 meters above ground level. In 1.0.2, that was never a problem, and the semi-deployment-to-full-deployment approach worked very well. However, I've found in 1.0.3 that the same parameters are no longer consistently safe. For the time being, I'm setting semi-deployment for 0.45 to 0.5 atmospheres (works out to about 4.5-5.0 km above sea level)â€â€I'm still mostly using full deployment at 500 meters above ground level, but may up that to 1,000 meters. That's worked so far for early-career suborbital and low-orbit-return trajectories, but I don't know yet whether or not it will hold up to the higher speeds of things like returns from the Mun or Minmus (let alone more distant venues).

Just as an FYIâ€â€0.35 is exactly what I originally set mine at. That's the "Ripped my parachutes off when they deployed at about 6.5 km and 250-280 m/s" experience I mentioned. I ended up having to set the opening pressure to about 0.50 to prevent them from tearing off, which triggered them slightly below 5 km altitude. Maybe (hopefully) I just had a freak occurrence, but I still don't want a freak occurrence to cause Bob Kerman to do a high-speed faceplant into the side of Kerbin.

I've had my parachutes instantly destroyed when deploying at velocities in the 250-280 m/s range at 6.5km or thereabouts of altitude (this was also for the "Orbit Kerbin" contract). I had success deploying them at around 230 m/s (ended up being around 5 km of altitude)â€â€that was true for both the Mk16 axial parachute and the Mk2-R radial chutes. P.S.  Kerbal = Little Green People. Kerbin = Planet inhabited by Kerbals.

I had the same (unfortunate) realization yesterday when I ripped all my parachutes off at around 230 m/s when they deployed at what had previously been my "standard" deployment altitude (approximately 6.5 km). I was able to get a safe deployment down around 5 km (200 m/s or so), but deploying at that altitude makes me nervous. I'm going to have to make sure I don't reenter above any high-altitude terrain, especially mountains. And all of that was just reentering from orbital and sub-orbital trajectories around Kerbin. I imagine coming in hot from Minmus is really going to do a number on them. A couple of atmospheric skips might be necessary to kill off some speed before re-entering "for real," at least before you get drogues. I haven't unlocked them yet in my new career game and am looking forward to seeing if they help the situation.

Updated to 1.0.3, screwed something with transferring previous mods / savedata and installing a few new ones, crashed the game repeatedly, ended up wiping it out and doing a complete fresh install... without saving my old savedata and craft files. So. Started a brand new 1.0.3 career from scratch! Proceeded to incinerate one of my first rockets via atmosphere-induced overheating during my ascent. After some paranoia and further white-knuckled testing, I was able to get through the atmosphere consistently without burning anything up. Proceeded to realize that the Mk16 and Mk2-R parachutes are much, much more vulnerable to deployment speeds and ripped them off the craft when deploying at my previously-customary height and speed. So, it's all been a lot of adjustments in how I put things together, but I've gotten up through "Orbit Kerbin" and am starting to prepare for a Munar flyby mission.

The 1.0.3 updated heating/drag mechanics do not play well with my automatic parachute deployment systems. Must remember to set auto-deployment at 0.5 atmospheres instead of 0.35 in order to avoid parachute annihilation. And to aim for a non-mountainous landing (because 0.5 atmospheres is well below the highest point on Kerbin)...

Yesterday I finallyâ€â€for the first time since 0.22 (the last time I played in any meaningful capacity)â€â€landed a kerbal on the Mun. I actually had a contract to rescue another kerbal stranded in equatorial orbit around the Mun, but having not yet unlocked the advanced Command Modules, and since the stranded kerbal was an Engineer, I couldn't figure out a safe and efficient way to both rescue Podrey Kerman and land a Scientist on the Mun in the same flight (unsafe and inefficient ways? Sure!). Since the duration of the rescue mission was ten years, I assumed Podrey had plenty of life support kicking around and just threw Bob directly at the Mun, waving to Podrey as he went flying past. And Bob was just super-stoked about it. Fortunately, Bob had more than enough fuel to get home, although reentry was a little rough. I didn't design the portion of the ship that would be reentering very well, it seems, as it kept wanting to flip around and dive in nose-first. Fortunately, I had slapped a HECS core in the service bay (since Bob doesn't know how to pilot) and was able to tell it to just follow the retrograde marker. That proved exhausting enough to drain the entire electrical supply, but it kept the module pointed nose-up long enough to make it through the atmospheric furnace, allowing a safe and wholly intact landing. Bob is now a legend among kerbal-kind.

As Step 2 of my "Explore the Mun" contract (Achieve Orbitâ€â€having already recovered data from space during a previous flyby, and not yet having landed or recovered surface data), I threw Bob Kerman out there. Might have overengineered the ship just a tad, with the result that I had more fuel than I knew what to do with. So after getting into a basic orbit, I reoriented into a 55-58km polar orbit and just went wild on EVA reports. Got near-space EVA reports for all 15 biomes, then sent Bob home. (Had enough fuel to add a Minmus flyby, easily, but I'm holding out on that until I get an "Explore Minmus" contract, because I'm greedy with my contracts like that.) Naturally managed to land at Kerbin during night-time, because that seems to be the only time I ever manage to land anything. Total Science collection from the flight of Werecat II: Approximately 600. Good job, Bob! Have a couple of contracts to address before the next munar flight: Need to get a satellite up around Kerbin, do some land surveys, and do a rendezvous-rescue. By the time that's done, hopefully we'll be able to step onto the Mun!

In my current career's first orbital flight, once I set my return trajectory I triggered the parachute stage before atmospheric reentry. Which isn't a "stupid thing I noticed too late," because it normally isn't a problemâ€â€I've gotten to where I manually tweak the parachutes in the VAB to auto-deploy at 0.34 atmospheres instead of 0.04, so I can usually "trigger" them before reentry and then they will automatically pop out at a reasonable point (something like 7 km, I don't recall). The stupid thing I noticed too late is that I failed to make that tweak on this particular craft, so the parachutes came out at 0.04 atmospheres, AKA really freaking high up. One Mk16 and two Mk2-R parachutes were dragging behind me as I ripped through the mesosphere. I was fairly convinced at this point that Jeb was on the fast track to a fatal case of lithobraking. The Mk2-Rs both incinerated during reentry, but miraculously the Mk16 survived and managed to slow the craft down enough that it didn't explode on impact with the unforgiving desert sands. Jeb and I both eventually calmed down. But it was a harrowing moment owing entirely to my own careless neglect.

Wow, guys. This has been fantastic, and I really appreciate everything. Way more response than I was expecting, and some great and extremely helpful stuff. Thanks to all of you. I got home last night and queued up some Scott Manley videos (God bless this man for his videos), and while most (not all, but most) of the concepts he's covered through the first five episodes are ones I was already in a pretty good place on, there's a big difference between "knowing what things mean" and "watching someone who knows what they're doing". Between his examples and the help here, I was able to put together a basic rocket last night and get it into orbit much, much more painlessly than I had been (and with far fewer parts, to boot). I haven't made any more ambitious flights yet aside from "Get into and back out of LKO", but I feel a lot better about it right now.As requested, some pictures. Unfortunately, I don't have an exact copy of the ship I had been using to attempt orbit, since I kept starting new campaigns and overwriting the old ones, so the first picture is a rough recreation of about what I would have been using. The top stage has a Mk1 cockpit; Science Jr.; a service bay with two Goo Containers, two Barometers, and two Thermometers, along with a Z-200 battery and an Inline Reaction Wheel thinger); a heat shield; and landing micro-struts to soften the impact / prevent the Science Jr. from blowing up. All of that's topped off with a basic antenna, a Mk16 axial parachute, and two Mk2-R radial parachutes. The "Get into orbit" stage has a FL-T800 fuel tank (or equivalent) and a LV-909 Terrier engine. Finally, two more FL-T800s and an LV-T45 Swivel Engine, four stabilizing winglets, and four Thumper SRBs (sometimes set to all fire at once; sometimes set to fire a pair, jettison, fire the next pair). As you can see, it's a very heavy build, and it handles like a barge (when it handles at all). (Edit: In the interest of clarification, I built this quickly in Sandbox mode this morning as a rough approximation of something I had previously been working with, which had been done in a prior (now deleted) Science Mode gameâ€â€I wasn't able to build this in my since-aborted Career Mode game that I was trying to run at the time of original posting because I hadn't upgraded my facilities enough to accommodate a rocket of this bulk. In my Science Mode, I don't honestly recall exactly what I was using this for, mission-wiseâ€â€it might have been High Kerbin Orbit, it might have been Munar fly-bysâ€â€but I remember that it always felt like a battle just to get it into LKO reliably in the first place, and that I was always just barely squeaking by (or failing at due to fuel shortage) whatever its "real" mission was. In that Science Mode game, I had managed high- and low-space single-kerbal fly-bys of the Mun when I got lucky, and a lot of aborted attempts to do a lot of other things like go to Minmus or land a probe on the Mun due to resource shortages.) And this is a picture of what I actually used last night to achieve LKO of around 90-100km and then deorbit: The so-called Supercat*. It uses a mostly KW Rocketry parts for the tanks and engine, but can best be summed up as follows: Top stage is similar to the above, only with no service bay. Using two radially-mounted Z-100 batteries instead, no barometers (this is in career mode and I hadn't unlocked them yet), and no landing struts. The upper stage fuel is the KW SA-2 LFT tank, which holds 216 "units" of liquid fuel, making it just slightly less than an FL-T400 + FL-T100, sitting on top of the usual LV-909 Terrier. The lifting stage is a KW SA-4 LFT plus another SA-2 LFT, which between them have 648 "units" of liquid fuel (compared to the 720 "units" above from the two FL-T800s). The engine is, of course, the KW Wildcat-Vâ€â€it has slightly more thrust and slightly better Isp than an LV-T30 Reliant engine, and also has gimbal capability (which I limited to 35%). No boosters. (As an aside, does anyone know why the flag in the background of the Wildcat is the KSP "stock" flag and not the flag I chose for this career?) * The KW Rocketry engine I used is nicknamed the Wildcat, and I took to naming my rockets based on their primary lift engine. The ship that I used for a suborbital escape from the atmosphere was dubbed the Wildcat, and since this ship that sought to enter orbit was a "souped up" version of its smaller predecessor, it got named Supercat.

Good to know. I'm looking forward to getting a chance to try it out tonight, and hopefully it'll help me start to understand some of what's going on with my so-called rockets. That sort of is what I'm trying to get at. Another way to put it would be this: That's very much the kind of stuff I'm thinking of: What are appropriate TWRs, how do I leverage that to the appropriate ascent speed and angle when trying to leave Kerbin, etc. My concern now is that I'm lifting very inefficiently and wasting a heinous amount of fuel in the process, leaving me with barely enough to circularize an orbit, let alone head off to do other fun stuff (and Great Kerb forbid actually landing on the Mun). Part of that may be wasting fuel by trying to blow through the atmosphere at hilariously wrong speeds and angles, and part of it may just be gross design failures on my part. Sounds like I need to get a probe into orbit so I can do this and see what it meansâ€â€you lost me at the bold text.* I'm functional with Prograde/Retrograde and even somewhat with Normal/Antinormal (in that, if I actually manage to get into LKO in the first place, I can line up my inclination with another object), but beyond that is something that I'm just going to have to play around withâ€â€and playing around with it requires a few fundamental capabilities first that I don't feel like I have yet. *I looked this up on the KSP Wiki and it thankfully had images showing exactly this, so I now know what you mean. I just had never done it before and needed to see it in order to completely process it. Yeah, my preference is to avoid complete automationâ€â€learn by doing, even though I may need some more foundational learning before the doing becomes practical. At the same time, if I'm doing something wrong and don't know it's wrong (or I strongly suspect it's wrong but don't know in what way it's wrong), I can't really learn much, which feels like my biggest current problem: Something is wrong. But I don't know what it is, or what's causing it, or how to fix it, and I don't have any reliable way to compare what I'm doing in different situations, so it's very difficult to learn by doing without... well, without knowing what I'm doing. ) I'll take a look at KAC later today, and TWP as well. (I'm still a ways away from interplanetary transfers at the moment, so it may be a more down-the-road itemâ€â€gotta land on the darn Mun first. And get back. Intact.) Will also go on the hunt for some Scott Manley / DasValdez videos when I get home. The names ring a bell, although mostly a bell that says "Here are crazy, crazy things that you will never be able to do." As long as they have some videos that include "Here's what we're doing and here's why", though, I should be able to benefit from them. It's always the "Why" that feels out of reach.

Just to make sure I'm clear on what you mean: Do you mean "build a rocket, turn on MechJeb autopilot*, watch happen"? * I know very little about MechJeb from a practical standpoint, other than "it has autopilot maybe?" I see it mentioned often and looked at the mod page, but there were so many dialogue boxes in the screenshot that I immediately said "Waaaaay too advanced to me" and moved on. I'll have to find some "MechJeb Tutorials" or something when I get home later.

Wasn't sure whether this properly belonged in Welcome Aboard, Gameplay Questions, General Add-On Affairs, or here. To here it is! So I've been in and out of KSP for quite a while (I don't remember the version I started with, but that's not important), and now I'm finally drifting back in for the first time since "real-release". I wasn't particularly adept at Kerbal rocketry even before, and now I find myself spending a lot of time being frustrated at myself, so I'm hoping some folks here can at least get me oriented in the right direction. My main issue to-date is primarily one of planning and efficiencyâ€â€namely, I don't know how to do either. I struggle to get a rocket into LKO effectively and efficiently (if I slap enough explosions on the thing I can get there inefficiently, but that's heinous), and when I do manage it I rarely have enough fuel left to do a whole lot elseâ€â€I've flown by the Mun and back, and that's it (technically I've also smashed an unmanned probe into the surface, but that's not much of an accomplishment). I understand the "first-level basics"â€â€prograde/retrograde, apoapsis/periapsis, Center of Mass/Thrust/Lift, what Delta-V is, that "specific impulse" basically means "gas mileage", etc. I don't understand how to efficiently/effectively use Delta-V, Thrust-to-Weight Ratios, how to deliberately plan a gravity assist instead of missing the Mun and hitting Minmus through sheer luck, etc. That is, the sort of stuff that "opens the doors" of the game, so to speak. So I'm turning here primarily because my search-fu is awful and because I rely on the wisdom of the mob in making recommendations. Specifically, here's what I'm hoping to find: 1) A good tutorial on being efficient/effective with Delta-V. 2) A good tutorial on Thrust-to-Weight Ratios and what to do with them in order to properly rocket. 3) How to get into orbit around Kerbin efficiently instead of just flailing around and spraying probably-wasted fuel all over the place. 4) A good tutorial on how to intentionally plan to go places. 5) Any mods to help with any of the aboveâ€â€I know the game doesn't always provide information (like TWR), and even though I don't currently know what to do with that information, once I do know that I would like to also actually have access to it. Currently the only mod I have installed and used is PreciseNode. I have also installed (as of this morning), but not yet used, KW Rocketry and Kerbal Engineer Redux (again, in the latter case, I wouldn't know what to do with the information it provides anyway). While written tutorials would be excellent so I can read them at work (so diligent, I know), I won't turn away a good video or video series if it'll help me get myself properly oriented. So, in short: Little help? (Edit: I know the Tutorials subgroup has a library, but it seems like the overwhelming majority of the information there is out of date with regards to version 1.0.x)

These are the winners. Probably my most "kerbal-sounding" names have been the Kerboshot, Kerbapult, and Kerbazooka series (none of which were ever intended to travel further away than LKO, and mostly were sub-orbital rockets). And of course, the Deathtrap Mk.I

For this particular bunkerless forumite: Extraordinarily confusing, bewildering, and a bit discouraging/disheartening.

This here was going to be my runner-up, but I just assumed that somebody, somewhere had come up with an actual use for it.

I'd be hard-pressed to come up with any parts more useless in the stock game (perhaps they have better uses in mods like RemoteTech) than the Communtron 88-88 and the Comms DTS-M1. Faster transmission? Whoopdie-doo. They suck up such an obscene amount of electricity relative to the Communotron 16 that it's ridiculous, and you get no actually useful return for it.

Great stuff, as usual. I have to ask the unspoken question: What is your plan for this campaign/mission report log once version 0.23 is released?

I'm not sure what the plans are for 0.23's changes, but in 0.22, transmission does penalize your return on a given experiment... however, it doesn't mean that you're depleting the available pool of science by 100% of the value and getting only 20-60% of the value in actual return. By way of example, let's say that you're in a situation where a fresh Materials Study would normally yield 75 Science if you return it to Kerbin, with a transmission efficiency of 20%. This means that, if you transmit the experiment, you gain 15 science (20% of 75). However, this does not reduce the total pool of science for that experiment by 75 and give you only 15 science in return. It reduces the pool by 15. If you want to get way into the math of it all, check out the wiki page: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Science Ultimately, though, the only part that matters to your question is "Each activity will provide a certain amount of science points, and the subsequent amount will be decreased whenever some science points are already obtained (either through recovery or transmission). This decrease depends on the amount of received points, which means it makes no difference whether a player recovers or transmits data: the maximum amount of science which can be obtained is always a constant. "

Seconded. Anyone got some citations?